OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

Operations Management

Operations Management

Introduction

Operations management relates to the design and management of services, supply chains and products, and their supply. The focus of operations management is to make efficient delivery of goods and services to clients possible through development, acquisition and utilizations of various resources. Operations management takes place at all levels in the organization. For instance, it can take place at the tactical, operations and even strategic level. Many companies around the globe are focussing on employing operations management as a tool to provide their valued customers with better products and services, so that they can get their customer lifetime value (Ritzman, 2005, pp 23). There are several issues related to the field of operations management. Operations management is an attempt to improve plant management and its layout, better control of production scheduling, rapid inventory management, expedition of production processes and better equipment maintenance. On a broad scale, we can say that the goal of operations management is to achieve effectiveness and efficiency of different operations of the organization. On a very broad scale, there are five purposes of operations management. These are flexibility, speed, quality, cost management and dependability.



Background of the Study

The company that has been selected for this topic is Petroleum Company of Trinidad and Tobago Limited which is even referred as Petrotrin. It is a large national company that is having employees around 5,240. The company drills for raw crude oil from beneath the earth's surface both on land and offshore. The oil is transported via pipelines to the refinery where it is refined in various products. These products are sold nationally and exported to international destinations. The refinery has a capacity to refine 40,000 barrels of crude daily. The problem that needs to be addressed in this topic is refining operations. It will cover the issues of Operations Management and will also highlight the importance of TQM (Total Quality Management. It will be seen that whether the company is handling their operations in an effective way or not. The solutions and recommendations will be provided to the company for handling their operations in a proper way. Therefore, all the issues related to Operations Management will be discussed in detail.

Discussion

Basic concepts

Quality has been defined strongly for understanding and comprehending all avenues and areas of organizational development, creating substitutes and alternatives that would escalate organizational progression and at the same time make an effective team that shall be the unexpected levels and benchmarks set by renowned organizations around the world. Quality, in terms of definition, has been defined as the non-inferiority or superiority of an object, good, unit or commodity, that may create, a benchmark or standard for the remaining or existing products available in the market (good) or for intangible commodities that are being delivered (service). In the quality domain, various improvement efforts have failed to improve health care outcomes, and sometimes even done more harm than good. In addition to the above traits of quality, it is also being defined as the ...